Disclaimer one: It's not finished. I'm posting the first chunk of it to make the deadline. (I know what Monk said about the deadline, but I think they're there for a reason, dagnabbit.)
Disclaimer two: this is pure and total FIREFLY fanfic. If you know nothing about the short-lived TV show, you won't know who anyone is. Sorry in advance. If you're curious about who Malcolm and Kaylee are, you can go legally watch the episode "Out of Gas" for free right here:
http://www.fancast.com/tv/Firefly/11202 ... Gas/videos It's good! And if you don't have 45 minutes to spare, the pertinent clip starts at about 19:15 and ends at 22:40. You can spare three minutes and change, surely.
Here you go.
==================
PERSUASION
by Frank L. Sisko
Malcolm Reynolds took a deep breath. This was going to be a serious fight.
He made note of the familiar, unpleasant weight at his right hip, and brushed his fingers against it – an old habit that he wished he’d never acquired. He exhaled sharply and raised his other hand to knock at the door.
It opened just before his knuckles could make contact.
“Cap’n!” said the startled young woman in the doorway who had clearly been crying. She took a step back. “I…I didn’t think you’d think it’d be worth the” – she stopped mid-sentence and lowered her head, her auburn locks falling over her face like a mask. “I mean,” she continued more quietly, fixating on the floor, “I thought you knew what I was meanin’ when I said what I told you before.”
Malcolm looked at her unassuming form and shook his head a little and tried not to smile. She wasn’t looking like much at the moment, but everything Zoe and Wash had been able to suss out from the ‘nets and the locals on this girl had confirmed his initial assessment: this was the mechanic he wanted and needed. She’d need some seasoning, and certainly some toughening up, but she had experience beyond her years and a definite feel for engines…and without someone like that aboard
Serenity, there’d be no point in even making the effort. This was not a fight he had any intention of losing.
“Miss Frye,” he said, “I heard what you said on the wave every little bit as clear as you sent it out.” He shrugged. “Just thought there might be more to the discussion, is all.”
She looked up, and snickered through what was left of her tears. “Nobody calls me that, sir. ‘Miss Frye’, that’s what they called my momma back when she taught down the school.” She wiped her nose with the ruffled, wrist-long sleeve of her housedress. Malcolm noticed that the hem of the dress reached her ankles, and he briefly wondered where she had acquired the more provocative dress she was wearing – or
not wearing, at first – when he had met her in his engine room the day before.
“Sorry to be so formal, then, Kaywinnit,” he said, and even added a slight bow for effect.
“We call her Kaylee,” came a baritone voice from behind him.
Malcolm closed his eyes and silently cursed his carelessness.
Somewhere else, he thought,
maybe anywhere else, this kind’a lapse, I’d be dead right now. But he was fairly certain, for once, that there wasn’t a gun trained on his back.
“Hi, Daddy,” sniffed Miss Kaywinnit Lee Frye, wiping her nose with the other sleeve.
The fight was about to begin.
* * * * * * * * * *
The tea was excellent. Malcolm could taste the real sugar. He sat further back in the wooden chair and took in the particulars of the kitchen.
Given the limited resources of a rim world like Manifest, the Fryes had done rather well for themselves. The hanging cookware seemed to be made of real iron (as opposed to the nano-ceramic crap that left that odd taste in your mouth no matter how fresh the ingredients of the dish happened to be), and the house itself was sturdy and clean and comforting.
“So,” the old man said, pausing to light his pipe, “They call you ‘Captain’, do they?”
Malcolm took another look around before answering, trying to pick up on anything he could. No art on the walls. No images of family or friends. Sparse, but not threadbare. Even the old man’s rocking chair seemed more about function than comfort: exercise for the remaining leg.
“Some folks do indeed, sir,” Malcolm said. “Happens when you buy a ship and put together a crew on her, they tell me.”
The old man drew on his pipe and rocked a bit before speaking again.
“That your rank in the war? Cap’n then as well?”
Malcolm stiffened and placed his mug on the table. “No, sir.” He looked away for a moment, and then regained eye contact. “Sergeant’s where I landed by the time all was done and through.”
“I see.” Frye held his thumb under his fingers and squeezed until the knuckle cracked loudly, like a branch breaking. “Not Alliance, then.”
Malcolm recognized the tone. Having fought on the losing side of a civil war had never been an easy cross to bear, and on occasion it had put him at odds with people from whom he needed things, or cooperation. Just now, Malcolm needed this man’s daughter to join his crew. He had made the offer on the spur of the moment, and the girl seemed more than willing. Less than an hour later, though, she had informed him that her parents refused to let her leave her home and sign onto some boat headed for who knows what and peopled by who knows whom.
This was the fight, and Malcolm knew that the weight at his hip would be of no help this time around.
